How New Technology
Enables Small Businesses to Do Great HR

Reap benefits of using HR software
for small business

In the corporate world, human resources is one of the most important aspects of running a business. When
Harvard Business Review interviewed executives from 550 companies in the United States,
they discovered that employee engagement was considered to be among the most important factors to corporate
success.

Large companies employ entire HR departments or outsource their HR to outside partners. In either case, they
have entire teams dedicated to hiring the right people, keeping them happy, making sure they work to the best of
their abilities and stay with the company. They can also help identify poor performers and show them the door, to
use a very brutal image.

In smaller companies, i.e. the small-to-medium businesses, HR is handled differently. Or at least it used to
be.

Sometime neglected in small business, human resources can be
significant assets
in a well-managed small or medium sized business.

The Lack of Everything

Running a small-to-medium business is one of the toughest jobs in the universe. It is a humongous challenge
which can have spectacular returns if everything goes the right way, but unfortunately, things rarely go the right
way. Due to the requirements of running an SMB, the stuff that is considered non-essential, such as HR, often gets
neglected.

The first reason for this is the lack of time and money. SMB owners have seemingly more important things to take
care of on a daily basis and they often feel like there are not enough hours in the day to ensure their employees are happy and productive. When they have to hire new
people, they rush into it because they have no time to go through a comprehensive hiring procedure. They might
consider hiring someone to do their HR for them, but they soon discover this is an expense they have no money
for.

In addition to this, the lack of know-how can also be an issue. Namely, most SMB owners simply do not have the
knowledge or the experience to handle their HR needs as well as professionals. It is the same case as with their IT
needs or anything else that is too technical. The fact that SMB owners rarely have the time to brush upon their HR
skills only makes things worse.

Making a good use of your human resources will produce results
for your business

The Proliferation of HR Software

The interesting thing is that HR software has been around since the day the computers started finding their way
into offices. Maybe the term HR software is giving too much credit to these programs. A better choice of word would
be HR tools. When you think about it, one of the first applications of the early spreadsheet programs such as
Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Excel was to better organize employees working for a certain
company.

As technology advanced, so did various solutions that were aimed at helping companies improve the way they do
their HR. However, it wasn't until the internet became as widespread as it is these days that we have seen the real
revolution in the way companies do their HR, including the small-to-medium businesses.

How Internet Changes Things

One of the most important traits of the internet that is very rarely talked about is how it makes previously
expensive things extremely cheap. To illustrate this, we will take a quintessentially HR issue – discovering and
engaging talent.

Before internet, a local medium-sized business was limited to the nearby area when it came to finding job
candidates that would best fill a position within their organization. Perhaps they were able to reach out to their
remote partners or put an ad in a nationally-distributed publication. Even if they managed to do it, it cost them
serious money.

These days, any company can post a job ad on any of the online job markets that have people from all over the world checking them regularly. This
makes it perfectly viable for a local medium-sized company to bag the perfect talent who lives thousands of
miles away.

The internet can help small business owners find and engage
valuable employees

The advancements in internet, and other technologies as well, also enables SMBs to choose between more
HR software options than ever before. No big software company has any monopoly on the SMB
market. Smaller developers of HR software who would have found it impossible to compete with their products
before can find their way to small companies who will be the perfect consumers of their product or service.

Finally, it is very important to point out the importance of software as a service (SaaS) phenomenon where small-to-medium businesses can save money
on their HR software by subscribing to a service for a price that is only a fraction of what it would have been
if they had to purchase software.

Closing Word

The gap is closing between the large corporations and SMB owners who are finally reaping the benefits of using
HR software that they can actually afford. It is safe to say that things are only going to get better for SMBs in
the future.